Shame (1961)

Five years before becoming the voice of intergalactic understanding as Star Trek’s Captain Kirk,  William Shatner delivered the performance of a lifetime as a bigoted drifter fanning the flames of segregation. Produced and directed by B-movie king Roger Corman, Shame was one of the filmmaker’s rare projects with a serious message and, perhaps not coincidentally, one of his few films that lost money. At a sensitive time in the civil rights movement, the producer had difficulty finding movie houses that would show the film. Despite its incendiary nature, Corman was quite proud of the movie, and rightly so. It stands as one of the most important pictures from his early-1960s output, and one of the best films that he ever directed. It also gives the world a chance to see Shatner as they’ve never seen him before. Post-Trek, the actor would reunite with Corman for the 1974 cult favorite, Big Bad Mama.

1961, B&W, 84 minutes